Nintendo Will Never Lose A Handheld Race

For all the problems the 3DS had at the beginning of its life, Nintendo sure has recovered nicely. Many gaming analysts pronounced the 3DS dead and Nintendo to follow shortly after. Journalists across the world wrote doom article after doom article claiming the 3DS dead months after release. Nintendo on the other hand, had other plans. A $80 price cut, 20 free games for early adaptors, a few stellar Mario games, and some blockbuster 3rd party games later Nintendo is once again killing it in sales.

The reason why is that Nintendo (and Sony's Vita) are trying too hard to be multitasking machines. When stacked up against smartphones, the 3DS and Vita are going to be less attractive to a lot of people.

On the other hand, if a game dev would simply make a dedicated gaming handheld, it would differentiate itself from the smartphone craze. That's how the DS sold so well in the face of the iPhone.

But you can't neglect such an important and influential bit of kit just because it is not a dedicated handheld. As the lines blur between mobiles and dedicated machines neglecting an important part is just stupid. The author may not think mobile gaming with "eradicate dedicated handheld gaming" but they definitely have had an impact on sales

Read the article? But that would require reading the article!! No I refuse! I'm going to make my comment based on just the headline!! Here's something funny, before the Vita released, smart phones were being tossed out the window as any form of competition here on N4G, and now that we are talking about how Nintendo will always be King, the SONY fans are running to those very same smart phones and claiming you can't discount them. My mind is pretty blown right now at the hypocrisy of this site.

You said it right there- MOMMY'S Android or iPhone. No one in their right mind would buy a kid a state-of-the-art mobile device, especially one that's outdated in a year. I'm not saying that those folks don't exist, but a Vita or 3DS guarantees 4-5 years of of not having to cling to the blind Apple sheep 10-month upgrade cycle.

Reverting back to old technology is definitely not going to change the industry.

You are right though, all people care about now are smart phones but that is exactly why gaming devices have become more multimedia driven also.

Simply in order to compete. If your handhelds did nothing but play games people wouldn't care oddly enough. They would end up being on their phone more but having a device that can do mostly what a phone can other than make direct voice calls.. Gives them at least a chance to want to be on the device more.

I do agree don't get me wrong most kids will probably be crying for an iphone 5 this Christmas year so.. I doubt anyone will want Consoles or even Handhelds too much.

Smart phones are for sure changing things as dumb as it may seem, people are just obsessed with them. They have become more of a fasion statement and a device that says hey!

I agree but the console market is different to the handheld market and there is one line in this Article that sums up Nintendo's hand held console. "Nintendo tends to create games that fit the pick-up and play nature that gamers demand."

I own a PSV and 3DS and they are both amazing hand held consoles in there own way but the PSV is lacking pickup and play games. If I look at my collection of games for the PSV I have MGS3, UCGA, Resistance and LBP Vita and none of them are really pickup and play. LBP could come under that but that's it.

The other thing Nintendo have over anyone else is games for everyone in terms of big names. Sony are still new to this market and LBP is the start of this but games Like Metroid, Mario, FZero, StartFox, Mario Football, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Nintendogs and the list carry's on. Both sony and Microsoft have a lot of work do to in the all round gaming market and they have both started this but if any of them want to take the console and handheld market off Nintendo they need to compete this market.

To be quite frank Sony need to start releasing games like Ninendogs if they want to ship more units and to a different crowd. It is the secound best selling series on the DS (with around 23 million sold). Clearly a big target audience for the DS was people playing these types of games (brain training is up there aswell) and Sony seem to be negleting this large audience.

One of these days there will be, and it'll be awesome. It will be so much better than a Red Ranger dedicated handheld, if they made one. And if they do make a Red Ranger handheld, i'll do this to it: http://www.youtube.com/watc... Skip to 00:40 for awesomeness.

Yes and they have a 3DS HD next as Myamoto hinted at this 4 months ago,it might be called the 3DS Pro or 3DS/HD ect and it is said to have Smartphone level ios and wiiu features that are not possible on 3DS we know MiiVerse is coming to 3DS but i'll wait for the next iteration as it will be so good you will never need another Handheld in your lifetime.

nintendo has children, women, casuals, & even adults that get their handhelds.. I loved every one of my nintendo handhelds from gameboy-3ds xl..

zelda, metroid, & castlevania was the main reason i owned gba-ds.. this new one coming out has me skeptical, but it might be good.. I just hope they dont remove the damn blood cuz thats always been a part of the game.. I really wish it was fully 2d & in beautiful sprites but mistwalker wants their reboot to taint the handhelds as well..

golden sun was a fantastic rpg series, sonic advance series was good too.. 3ds doesnt have much 3rd party yet but some will come to the west hopefully..

I still think vita is a much better handheld personally.. as far as value & well everything about it is better to me but nintendo does have those games that somehow feel great when u complete them.. They have heart n soul.. i will always support nintendos handhelds.. Home consoles on the other hand have burned me for the past 2 generations.. I will play it safe & wait til the time is right for a wii u

Even though patcher is wrong right now about phones taking over handhelds there is some fact behind his words and one day it might happen.

Theres a reason why MS has not entered the handheld console market and thats because there is no market, two handhelds are over crowded and now youc an add phones to that.

EDIT* There will be people who buttlick nintendo and don't want to read this properly and just think I am bashing but I am not, I love my nintendo handhelds I have every single one but the handheld market is very fragile and you can't go around thinking nintendo is invincible.

I think Microsoft had other reasons to not make a handheld. They have had plenty of time, and plenty of Nintendo hendhelds to watch make amazing sales. The original xbox and GBA released a few months apart. I'd like to believe Microsoft had a good reason when the GBA sold 3 times as much as the xbox. The handheld market may be dangerous now, but Microsoft entered the console race 11 years ago and have had plenty of time to make one if they even wanted to.

I'd like to know why they never made a handheld, but the answer could be something as simple as they just didn't care about handhelds.

IDK about never, but Nintendo has such a strong footing in the portable space that it's going to be very hard to beat them in terms of market share.

Nintendo, for about 20 years was able to build this culture around their portables. It ran virtually uncontested, so they were able to assemble a large fan base spanning generations.

As a new competitor, it's very, very hard to grab a decent market share in that type of environment. The PSP did a very good job. Now Sony needs to build on that start and expand that space that they earned with the PSP.

Overall Nintendo isn't unbeatable by default, but a lot of factors are going to make it pretty difficult for them to be beaten IMO.

20 million 3ds's sold already means in its 6/7 years it will hit about 150 million as the trend with Nintendo handhelds is they sell more and more every year,so think 25 million a year easy going foward.

Nintendo may never lose a handheld race but with Sony's entry into the market they are at least challenged to some extent.

No other portable that has gone up against a Nintendo one has taken more market share away than the PSP. Sony did at the start did really well introducing the PSP to the masses & that made the consumers at least curious. Unfortunately with piracy Sony had to abandon the system (at least in NA) to save development cost.

Nintendo can always fall on their mass marketed first party franchises to secure handheld dominance but with Sony in the picture it will force Nintendo to work harder to stay on top.